


Who do you think you are?

by ReinaZanahoria



Category: Being Human (UK)
Genre: Addiction, Blood Addiction, Donors, F/M, Family, Hal goes to Prague to basically meet his grandkids so cuuuuute, Prague, family tree
Language: English
Status: In-Progress
Published: 2015-12-11
Updated: 2017-11-28
Packaged: 2018-05-06 03:13:35
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: Graphic Depictions Of Violence
Chapters: 3
Words: 4,296
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/5400911
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/ReinaZanahoria/pseuds/ReinaZanahoria
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>Rook places a bottle of blood on the table, and Hal accepts the deal.<br/>He meets seven people, one for each day of the week. He can finally let himself go with Alex. The hunger stabilizes and he wonders why he ever worried.<br/>Then he decides to go on a trip to Central Europe, to see what happened to the woman he first loved five hundred years ago. How far can he go?</p>
            </blockquote>





	1. Asuka

“Deal.” Hal nodded at Rook, a nervous smile on his face.

Dominic relaxed, his job now safe. With Hal as the figurehead for communications with the Type 2 rabble, he could keep department expenses to a minimum. Hopefully he could convince the home secretary that his job was worth the investment.

“It’s so great of you to finally understand there is no sense in putting off the inevitable. Acquiring blood in a contained and consensual way is your best option.”

“Quite.” The smile on Hal’s face was strained, he was starving. Now that he allowed thoughts of hunger into his consciousness, the screaming of his appetite grew even stronger. Fifty five years of restraint was a long time.

Rook noticed the beads of sweat rolling off Hal’s nose. “I’ll arrange a donor for tomorrow,” he said.

“No!” cut Hal, some spit falling out. Saliva was being overproduced in his mouth, “I mean, if it’s not too much trouble, I’d much rather today. Please.”

Rook grinned, he had expected this response. “Then at least give me twenty minutes to see who I have available.”

* * *

 

Rook handed Hal a kit-kat and a juice box as they walked through the corridor. The juice box read ‘100% organic’ and had a little tesco logo. Hal saw nothing dangerous in the two food items and took them.

“Thank you but that is not quite what I need at present,” he stated calmly, and gestured to hand them back.

“They aren’t for you,” said Rook, “I’d rather not watch you feed so I will leave you at the door, but she might feel a little nauseous or dizzy. This will restore her blood sugar levels.”

Hal straightened his jacket. “Ah.” He tried to concentrate on the rest of what Rook was explaining, but the anticipation distracted him too much. Rook finished on a sentence Hal could hear.

“...And if you fail to remember anything I have said, as I can tell you are not all present, she has done this before and you can trust her.”

Hal nodded. “Has she been instructed to stake me if anything goes wrong?”

Dominic’s eyes fixed the door in front of them. “Of course.” He opened the door and allowed Hal in. He handed Hal a stopwatch and closed the door.

The room was sterile and the walls were blank. A woman in her late thirties sat on a hospital bed. She wore a long green dress with short sleeves. Her hair went down to the bed, an impressive feat as she was sitting up straight. The dark strands lay on her lap. The bed was quite clean but Hal’s sharp vision detected small stains of blood.

He wanted to say hello, but hunger was removing his ability to speak. He almost threw himself at her. She took the stopwatch from his hand, and he wordlessly placed the juice box and kit-kat on the side of the bed.

“Ten seconds?” she asked. Hal grunted a yes. “Here,” she whispered, pulling up her dress and pointing to a spot on her upper thigh. She could feel his desperation as his fingers traced her thigh to find a vein. He glanced up at her questioningly and she nodded.

His eyes turned black and he sunk his fangs into her pale skin. He swallowed the blood as it burst out of the vein, sucking it as fast as he could. His mouth was pumping out the precious liquid, making the most of every moment. He had missed that metallic warmth that coursed past his tongue and warmed his chest like hot soup. He felt the euphoria of bloodlust, wishing it could go on forever.

He felt her soft hand pushing his shoulder away. He fell back to the floor and a hand automatically came up to push the dribbles of blood back into his mouth. He shuddered with pleasure, the taste was orgasmic. He lay there for a few seconds, reveling in the high the blood had given him. He opened his eyes and they were hazel again.

“Can you,” mumbled the woman, between sips from the juice box, “see? When your eyes are like that, I mean.” She munched on a piece of kit-kat.

Reminded of her presence, Hal felt embarrassed. “I forgot to say good afternoon,” he said, “Good afternoon. I’m sorry you had to see me like this… It’s been a while.”

She took another bite of the kit-kat and chewed it thoughtfully. The air was static and too still, almost anticlimactic after the euphoria of the previous moment.

“I can see,” he added, “When my pupils dilate to a maximum. We become much more light-sensitive but general sight is not lost.” He licked a drop of blood off his lip and shuddered involuntarily. “Thank you, by the way.”

“Did I taste good? Are certain bloods even better than others?” mused the woman aloud.

“I don’t know… Well yes, some taste better than others. But your blood is the first fresh blood I’ve had in fifty five years,” Hal closed his eyes, playing the moment again in his head, “It’s hard to compare.”

“Do you usually agree on what tastes good, or do you all like different sorts?” pushed the woman, as though the question had only just occurred to her.

Hal blinked. He was not used to talking to a donor, it had been centuries since the last time he had tried a similar arrangement. “I don’t know, we don’t tend to share.”

The woman fell silent in contemplation.

“What’s your name?” inquired Hal.

“Asuka. You’re Hal, the ambassador, right?” Hal did not say anything, a response felt unnecessary. She opened a drawer next to the bed and rummaged through it. She pulled out a first aid kit and removed a packet of cotton and plasters. She ripped a piece of cotton out and added a few drops of alcohol.

Hal licked his lips again, his eyes darted to the bloody thigh. “Do you mind?” he asked, gesturing with a movement from his neck.

“Not at all,” she said, “No teeth, mind.”

Hal licked the drying blood off her leg. The taste of her skin mingled with the salty warm liquid.

He sat back up. “I’ll help you with that,” he said. He took the cotton wool and carefully disinfected the bite. Two pinprick holes showed up on skin that had become almost ghostly white.

“What did you do before… Rook recruited you?” He asked, feeling he should engage the conversation further. He peeled a plaster from a sticker and placed it carefully over the cuts.

She frowned. “Are you sure you want to know? I’m not proud of it.”

“Don’t feel you have to tell me, but I will have you know that it cannot be as terrible as some of the things I have known. Do not fear shocking me.”

She bit her lip, looking away in embarrassment. “It was in a brothel,” she blurted, “I mean, well, doing what you would expect… It was an error of circumstance and...” She trailed off.

Hal stood up. “My mother worked in one too, there is nothing to be ashamed of. This world is cruel to those in need of kindness.” He held out a hand to pull her up from the bed.

“She did?” Asuka asked, the tenseness in her shoulders fell. Hal nodded. He had never known which of the prostitutes was his mother but that detail felt unneeded. He tugged the bottom of his jacket and neatened the contents of the first aid box. Crouching, he placed the box at the back of the drawer. Slowly, he closed the drawer and stood back up.

He grinned nervously. “Thank you, really, Asuka,” he said, moving to the door.

"I’ll see you next week, right?” she asked, back to sipping her juice box. “Bye!” she called as the door closed. Her voice, high and friendly, echoing in the corridor.

Hal had left the room.


	2. Alex

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> Hal comes home to Alex with a certain drunken swagger.

Hal stood by the front door, leaning his head against it. Alex was sat at the coffee table, surrounded by pieces of a puzzle. Some were on the floor and Hal noticed a couple she would regret having left under the sofa. She had organised half the edges into a pile and was making a half-hearted attempt to do the outline first.

“Alex,” he murmured, his voice deep and sugary. “I’m home.”

She didn’t look up from a jigsaw puzzle she had been putting together. “Hey, where were you? Tom came home ages ago.”

Hal thought for a second. “I was out, at the pub, socialising.” He inched closer to her. “I think being with you has really helped…”

Alex glanced up and jumped back a little, surprised by how close his face was to hers. “Has it?” she asked. He was so close she could smell him. Correction. She would have smelled him had her senses been less dulled by the fact she was a ghost. But she could imagine his smell.

“Yes, and you know… fifty years has really been the longest time I have spent sober.”

“Are you sure you’re sober?” she half-joked.

Five hundred years had not made Hal a bad liar. “I’m sure,” he said, and his voice was steady. He sat down next to her on the sofa and lay left his hand on her thigh. It was cold and tingly. His eyes flickered to her lips. “I’ve been thinking… maybe I can let myself go a little… Let myself have feelings… Because, Alex, without feelings, what are we?”

“You’re so hot when you’re voice goes deep like that,” she said.

Hal grinned. “C’est encore mieux en Francais, n’est ce pas?” he whispered, knowing just how much she’d enjoyed his french flirting when they had tried to accomplish her bucket list. He cupped her face with his right hand and parted his lips slightly to kiss her. Before he could move in, Alex inched in and, lips open, returned the favour. Hal felt a lightness to the kiss, a sort of shimmer to the touch. It was not the first time he had kissed a ghost but it was always a pleasant sensation.

Alex felt the cool skin of Hal’s lips against hers. She melted into the sensation and for a fraction of a second, she felt her lips past through his. In that fraction of a second, she felt a dulled yet definite hunger. A desperation born of nightmares. Emotions of regret and horror and pain that were not hers. She pulled away.

Hal laughed. “Alex, we do not need to breathe. We’re both dead. I know it is a force of habit, but trust me, it is so much more fun when you resist the urge.” A second of silence. “Alex, are you alright?”

She was not. The memory of the pain brought tears to her eyes. She peered at him from the corner of her eye and decided she would be brave for him. She could not imagine a life with that pain on the daily. “I’m fine,” she said, smiling past the tears. “I’m just… so proud of you Hal! It’s great that you’re sober.”

Hal frowned. “Is something the matter?”

“Tears of joy, that’s all they are, Hal,” she lied.

His concern gave way to a flirtatious grin. “Well if that is all they are…” he said, moving in to kiss her again.

Alex flinched but leaned in and kissed him back, this time, careful to concentrate on every aspect of it. His lips were harder than she’d expected, certainly a lot colder than she had imagined. It reminded her she was kissing a corpse. It was oddly pleasant.

He put his large hand behind her back. It was freezing. She shivered, before realising that hot and cold had no actual effect on her body. Sensation seemed to slip away again. There were so many things to concentrate on, being solid was a chore.

Hal leant back into the sofa. “I can feel you going all fuzzy, Alex. Do not worry, it’s common with ghosts.”

“Does that mean...” mumbled Alex. She wondered if the mini-possessions were just as common, she doubted it. Surely Hal would not have gone close to her had he known she was likely to read his thoughts.

“I’m afraid sex is out of the question,” grinned Hal, “But don’t worry, there are alternatives…”

Alex’s eyes wrinkled and she giggled. “Oooh, can we include some French?”

“Bien sur, mon amour.”

* * *

 

Stabbing pain in his abdomen. Sweat soaking his pyjamas. Hal shot up in bed. He shivered from the damp of his clothes. He needed blood. There was a small shop down the street from the house, he could jump out of bed, run over and kill the shopkeeper. Fat man, mid-fifties, unworthy of life. He could drain him dry and any customers he found would suffer a similar fate.

His mind cleared. Killing was definitely not an option, he had sworn on Eve’s memory. His phone pinged. The ringtone was unfamiliar. He reached over the side of his bed, eyes closed. He patted around and felt the cold case of a phone on his bedroom dresser.

“Rise and shine, sleepyhead,” whispered Alex. He opened his eyes to see her sitting at the end of the bed.

“How long have you been here?”

“I just came in when I heard ya phone,” she said, “I hope you’re not getting calls from other women.”

Hal peered at the mobile on his dresser. “That’s not mine.”

“Well I found it in your jacket last night, so it must be.”

“Why were you looking through my- Nevermind.” Hal picked up the device. He ran a finger across the side of the metal casing and moved the phone so as to make the screen catch light from the window. It seemed perfectly normal.

“I’m just going down to watch TV,” called Alex as she stepped away and put a hand on the door handle. “Feel free to come and join me.”

Hal turned the phone on, the light hurting his sensitive eyes.

-slipped this to you yesterday. delete messages as they come if you do not wish for your roommates to know.

Dom.

Hal wrote back.

-When will I see you today?

-any time from 9.00 to 17.00. if i’m not there, ask the receptionist to show you where to go.

Dom.

Hal deleted the messages and checked the clock. It was half past eight. It took about half an hour to get there, but he didn’t want to leave immediately. Rook couldn’t know how much every muscle in his body was aching to be fed. He decided to have a shower.

Water fell, light and cold on his face. There were some things he hated about the twenty-first century, hygiene was not one of them. He massaged some shampoo into his thick dark hair. He touched his nose and eyelids, wondering not for the first time, what he looked like. He could not remember what he looked like, the last time he’s had a portrait painted was a few hundred years ago. He dried himself off on a towel, staring in the mirror at the floating piece of fabric. 

The lonely existence of a vampire, he thought to himself, we can’t even befriend our reflections.

He got dressed, as slowly as possible, savouring the thought of his next meal. Already he could feel his senses sharpening as they always did after a period like this of abstinence.

“Alex?” he called.

“Yes?” said a cheeky Scottish accent behind him. He turned, nonchalant.

“Is my parting okay?” he asked, a finger aimlessly pointing at his head.

She nodded, paused thoughtfully for a moment and then reached to ruffle his hair. “It looks better like this though. Now, are ya gonna come watch TV with me or no?”

The simple answer to that question was that as much as he would have liked to sit idly with Alex in a mundanely wonderful and loving fashion, he would also much prefer sucking the life out of a schoolbus of children. Clearly, there had to be priorities.Yet  Hal still felt that leaving immediately to feed with Rook would lose him the power game and besides, he did not want to look suspicious. His stomach growled, demanding he make a decision.

“Of course, I’ll just make myself some breakfast,” he acquiesced finally.

Alex’s hand fell from his head to his shoulder. “You don’t usually make breakfast, what’s with that?”

“It, um, it helps with em…” He begged her for help with his eyes. There was nowhere this sentence was going, his mouth just needed something to do to stop him from ripping an actual human being apart.

Alex misunderstood completely, “Oh that! It helps with the, uh, hunger?”

Hal nodded. Anything to rid her of suspicion. Besides, it wasn’t all that untrue. 

He made breakfast, singing in the kitchen. He fried some sausages, eggs and half a tomato. The meal was consumed at the dining table, not in front of the television as he considered that poor manners. He watched the morning news perched on the end of his chair while Alex lay on the couch.

“It’s a pity you’ll never be on TV,” said Alex, “You’re taking away such a gift from the world.”

Hal grinned, “Not so, I have had a few roles in special effects work, especially back in the early nineteen hundreds. Filmmakers were willing to use any trick back then and vampires were occasionally used for the very hardest of scenes.”

“Yeah, but you haven’t got any lines. And no one sees your face.”

 


	3. Chapter 3

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> Hal is hungry. With a capital H.

Hal shoved his fist into his mouth, ignoring the pain of the large fangs poking into his skin. He tried to blink the darkened iris away, but still, he knew from the bright light searing his eyes that he had not managed. He had waited a little too long to see Rook. Drums pounded in his ears. BLOOD BLOOD BLOOD. He thought of setting up intricate patterns of dominoes in his head. He imagined short sudoku scenarios and reorganizing matchboxes and coloured paperclips.

He opened his eyes, the light dimmed. The fangs dulled on his fist. He knocked on the door, waiting for Rook’s response.

“Hi Hal, we were waiting for you,” called a voice as the door immediately swung open. “We were beginning to feel a bit silly for trusting you on only one person a day, if you’d prefer, we can always supply more. Anyone but myself, Hal, anyone but myself,” Rook walked into the light. Hal had waited over twenty-four hours, to prove to Rook that he could manage on one with utmost ease.

He readied himself for a composed greeting. “Good afternoon, Rook,” he tried to pause for decency but his body refused, “Where’s Asuka?”

“No no, it’s not Asuka today,” said Rook, smiling. “She’s recovering.”

Hal’s face went a paler shade of sheet white. “What?”

“That’s what we call it, you know, what you do during that week between donations. You can’t give blood every day.”

“You can’t?” Hal asked, feeling guilty, “I mean, you can’t. Yes, I was aware of that.”

Dominic laughed, clasping his hands behind his back. “Did you? Most vampires don’t, it’s incredible how little they know about their effect on their donors. Anyway, your donor for this day of the week is Dave. He’ll be waiting in the same room.” He handed a small lunch box to Hal, a glance showed another KitKat and juice bag. 

Hal grabbed it, waved at Rook and stormed down the corridor after the smell of blood he would finally be able to drink.

A plump middle-aged man leaned forward on the hospital bed. He was wearing trousers with zipper-attached trouser legs. “‘Ello,” said the man, “I’m Dave.”

“Good afternoon Dave, my name is Hal,” he smiled but realised his mistake as he felt the fangs against his lower lip. “I’m sorry, that was unseemly.”

Dave pulled a stopwatch from his pocket, “Ten seconds?” he asked, as he unzipped the trousers leg, baring his hairy thigh. Hal nodded, this time he found the vein much faster, the practice of the day before had certainly helped.

“It’s my first time donating blood this is,” said the man, seconds before exclaiming a rude word very loudly as Hal sunk his fangs into his skin. The seconds ticked by painfully as Hal drank from his leg like a baby drinking from a breast. Dave readied himself to push Hal, but to his surprise, Hal sat up after only five seconds.

“Dave, are you alright?”

Dave stared at the man, then back at his bleeding thigh. “I have two fang holes in my leg.”

“I apologise, but this is serious, have you had your blood analysed or tested recently?” Every block of Hal’s being did not care, every inch screamed to be back at that leg, sucking madly, but Hal refused.

“Not really no,” said Dave.

“It’s simply… your blood tastes much sweeter than I recall being the norm.” Hal thought a while, “We should call Rook, I suggest you go to hospital and get tested.”

Dave blinked, he had seen addiction in men before, he knew he had seen it in Hal mere moments ago, yet the clarity of speech and control Hal was exhibiting was beyond anything he had seen before. “Are you sure you don’t want more blood? You’ve still got five seconds.”

“Not an option, this could be serious, they’ll need your blood at the hospital.” Hal’s eyes were still a complete black. He could not return home in that state, but he knew Dave’s life was of greater importance. He opened the door of the room, “Dominic! You must get Dave’s blood tested!” he called, “I think it tastes abnormal.”

Rook clipped his way into the room. “How would you describe the problem?” He asked, pen and paper in hand.

“The blood tastes sweet.”

Rook’s hand darted into his briefcase, which he had been holding. He opened it and removed a small box. He pulled out a small machine and short plastic strip from a pocket. He placed a drop of Dave’s blood on the strip and stuck the strip inside the machine.

Dave was still gaping. “What’s going on?” The machine beeped and showed a series of lines.

“Test for your blood sugar levels,” said Rook, “I’m diabetic type one, so I own this kit… It shouldn’t read too high if you’re okay.” He glanced down at the machine. “No, this isn’t good, I think you should head to a hospital.” He turned to Hal. “Well? Are you going to let us out?”

“Yeah,” muttered Hal, the taste of blood still on his teeth. He walked out of the room, in a blur, holding the door open for Dave. He wondered how it was that he had walked into the room with murder on his mind and had left having practically saved a life.  _ I can help people,  _ he thought. It had been years since he had felt this justification to be alive. Two centuries ago, he had tried to excuse his murderous behaviour by donating money to orphanages and various charities. He had tried so hard to convince himself that the lives saved justified the pain he caused just to stay sane.

* * *

 

A loud cracking sound resounded in Hal’s bedroom. He sat up in his bed to realise that he had been clenching his jaw so tightly in the night that it’s cracking had woken him up. He felt cold, hungry and immeasurably irritable. He glanced at the clock on the wall. It was eight am. He licked his dry lips.

Hal heaved, sitting in his bedroom. The chemicals in the blood he had just drunk were thick on his tongue and he began to go through the motions of nausea. He thought of running to the bathroom but was worried about the eventual mess being found out by Alex. He clutched his stomach in his arms. He reached for his metal bin just before feeling another urge to throw up.

The contents felt uncomfortable for a split second and then he spewed red vomit into the can, watching the contents splatter against the sides of it. There were bits of food in the vomit but it was mainly blood.

He knew that the lack of blood the day before and the sickness would take its toll on him. He did not want to seem weak in front of Rook, but he had no choice at this point. He called Dominic.

“Hello?”

“Hi, this is Hal,” he said into the receiver. “Is there any way I can return today for a second donor? See, due to the sugar incident I had less blood than I should have yesterday…”

“Hmmm. I see your problem but you should have told me that yesterday. How was your donor today?”

“No! That’s the issue, the donor was drugged, they were laced with chemicals.”

“I know, we couldn’t find any volunteers so we made one.”

Hal panicked. “Rook I need a donor again today because I just threw up the chemical-laced one and I’ve had less blood than I need in the past two days.”

“I’ll see what I can do for tomorrow, but right now I’m afraid you’ll have to stick it out.”

Hal gritted his teeth and hung up. He gazed longingly at the bucket of acidic blood then glanced at his bedroom door. The smell of blood and sickness pleased his nostrils and within seconds he had grabbed the bin by its rim and was pouring its contents back in his throat. He hacked at the taste of chemicals and half-digested food but his addiction was partly satisfied.

 


End file.
